Modern milking systems comprise milking stations able to milk animals, such as cows, and transfer the milk to a storage tank, while waiting for transport to a dairy plant. The milk is a vulnerable food product with high demands for cleanliness and handling temperatures, and it is important to protect it from micro organisms and prevent chemical reactions. Thus, the equipment of such a milking system has to be cleaned regularly. A way to clean the equipment is to empty the system from milk and supply a cleaning liquid, by means of a cleaning liquid supply line, to the milking system.
In milking systems which comprises several milking stations there is a need to make sure that a sufficient amount of cleaning liquid is supplied to the equipment of each station. The Japanese patent document JP 2000-324970 illustrates such a system. To supply a sufficient amount of cleaning liquid to the teat cups of the milking stations, selector valves are provided to alternately supply cleaning liquid to the teat cups at a first and a second milk line, respectively. In this way cleaning liquid is not supplied to all milking stations at the same time and thus a larger amount of cleaning liquid can be supplied to each station.
It is desirable to be able to clean as many stations as possible at the same time, but it is difficult to determine how many that can be sufficiently cleaned at the same time, especially in large milking systems, so called large milking parlors, with many stations.
The above-described drawbacks and deficiencies of the prior art are overcome or alleviated by a method and an arrangement for monitoring the supply of cleaning liquid to a milking system.